While it's a huge effort there is a ton of value in motivating game developers to give back. We should all have the ability to take an article someone publishes here and not only vet it but comment on it and share additional ideas.

What about editing? Can members of the community edit the articles, improving their wording, grammar, and code snippets to improve overall quality? Adding additional screenshots to visually demonstrate each step?

Even if one person writes the article, and has his name on the article, the article needs to be brushed up and improved by peers, especially and things change overtime.

>>We should also know without a doubt that we're not getting ourselves into legal hot water if we use the published code in commercial applications.

Will you have a standard code license available? (Preferably something like MIT, Boost License, or public domain)

License options right now include MIT, Z-Lib, Microsoft Public License, LGPLv3, Public Domain, as well as our own which is currently in draft form:

The purpose of our own license is to allow free use of the source in commercial applications, allow redistribution of the source as part of a larger work as long as the author of that code is not misrepresented, and that the article itself that accompanies the source may only be copied and republished with permission from the author. The point is to license both the article AND the source a bit differently. This will be our default license for articles but others will be available.

I'd like to see decent indepth HLSL guide. All those semantics like SV_Target, POSITION, COLOR0 are really confusing to beginner. Also register usage and other advanced HLSL semantics explanation article would be cool.

It just occurred to me. What ever happened to the OGL site that was (or still is) hosted on GD.Net. Is anyone updating that? Or is it dead and buried?

nehe.gamedev.net?

Yes! That's the one! Is that part of the current plan? Will it be rewritten? Is it dead? Or is it there for legacy purposes?

Edited by Alpha_ProgDes, 06 March 2013 - 02:26 AM.

Beginner in Game Development? Read here.Super Mario Bros clone tutorial written in XNA 4.0 [MonoGame, ANX, and MonoXNA] by Scott Haley
If you have found any of the posts helpful, please show your appreciation by clicking the up arrow on those posts

Spoiler

How on earth can you go around telling lies, be shown that they are lies, then continue to ignore the evidence to the contrary. I'm not qualified to deal with this, sorry. - HodgmanNever crash to desktop. That's the equivalent of a Starbucks rep punching you in the face when you try to order a coffee with soymilk when they run out of soymilk. - KoobazaurFor programmers, R & D means "Research & Duplicate".Just remember... XML is like violence. If it doesn't work, you just aren't using enough of it... - MoeEvery time I go into my account settings I feel like I've never used the internet before. - booleanPerson X: Do you want to live forever?
Person Y: No, but I want to live a long life.
Person X: Only cowards live that long.
Person Y: And yet, we travel to seek the counsel of these "cowards".

like in the sense of the C or C++ with a scripting language on-top development model (or pros/cons of using a scripting language vs doing straight C and/or C++).

some of us have our own scripting languages, but design/implementation of scripting languages may well be pushing it (and at least in my case, it is debatable if it was really strictly "worth it" from a time/effort/opportunity-cost POV, but alas at least it was interesting...).

Since I've been working on GUI pretty extensively lately: IMGUI vs RMGUI.

Also, considering that Scaleform has become (or is quickly becoming) the standard UI middleware solution for many AAA games, an article or two on Flash and ActionScript with a focus on UI development would probably be helpful, or at the very least quite valuable to studios that need Scaleform UI developers. Obviously you couldn't discuss any proprietary information, but most of the learning curve to Scaleform is Flash itself.

I'd love to write something... in a few years... when I'll know what I'm actually talking about.

I think the point is that "they don't care". Just write an article about something game dev related. You don't have to be an expert. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be finished and run.

Hmm... I'll see if I find something to write about Thing is... winter (uni classes) is coming.

Well first.... wouldn't it be Spring classes? Second, think of it as a really fun dissertation or class project It could be something as simple as a 3 part beginner intro tutorial:

how to setup a window in SDL 2.0/SFML 2.0/Allegro 5

how to get ONE graphic in the window

how to get the graphic to move

how to setup the input

how to setup the input to move the graphic

how to setup the sound and music

how to loop music and associate sound effects to input actions (ex: walk, shoot, jump)

In case, you think I can't count. There's 3 main parts: graphics, input, and sound

Beginner in Game Development? Read here.Super Mario Bros clone tutorial written in XNA 4.0 [MonoGame, ANX, and MonoXNA] by Scott Haley
If you have found any of the posts helpful, please show your appreciation by clicking the up arrow on those posts

Spoiler

How on earth can you go around telling lies, be shown that they are lies, then continue to ignore the evidence to the contrary. I'm not qualified to deal with this, sorry. - HodgmanNever crash to desktop. That's the equivalent of a Starbucks rep punching you in the face when you try to order a coffee with soymilk when they run out of soymilk. - KoobazaurFor programmers, R & D means "Research & Duplicate".Just remember... XML is like violence. If it doesn't work, you just aren't using enough of it... - MoeEvery time I go into my account settings I feel like I've never used the internet before. - booleanPerson X: Do you want to live forever?
Person Y: No, but I want to live a long life.
Person X: Only cowards live that long.
Person Y: And yet, we travel to seek the counsel of these "cowards".

I'd love to write something... in a few years... when I'll know what I'm actually talking about.

I think the point is that "they don't care". Just write an article about something game dev related. You don't have to be an expert. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be finished and run.

Hmm... I'll see if I find something to write about Thing is... winter (uni classes) is coming.

Well first.... wouldn't it be Spring classes? Second, think of it as a really fun dissertation or class project It could be something as simple as a 3 part beginner intro tutorial:

how to setup a window in SDL 2.0/SFML 2.0/Allegro 5

how to get ONE graphic in the window

how to get the graphic to move

how to setup the input

how to setup the input to move the graphic

how to setup the sound and music

how to loop music and associate sound effects to input actions (ex: walk, shoot, jump)

In case, you think I can't count. There's 3 main parts: graphics, input, and sound

Well, here it would be Autumn classes And then yeah, winter would be coming.

Anyway, yeah, I'd guess that making an article about a high level library shouldn't be much of an issue. But, I don't know about such libraries. I only know basic OpenGL (and basic Java programming), and the first 3 points would basically require me to write informed explanations of buffers objects, pointers, vertices a bit of algebra (vectors, systems of linear equations, ie matrices, transformations, etc), OpenGL state based system, the binding mechanism, contexts, profiles (core, compatibility, etc), vertex shaders (GLSL!), fragment shaders (moar GLSL!), and a big, BIG etc. Many, many things, there are few online resources that cover all of that.

I have some knowledge of all that, but in this sort of thing, accuracy in the information matters a lot. If you asked me "how a fragment gets converted to a pixel?" right know, I'd probably have some idea but it would have inaccuracies.

I don't want to explain stuff that I don't know throughout myself, lest I end up doing stuff like many of those "videogame tutorials" videos in Youtube. Informing is a commitment to be properly informed yourself and give proper information to others.

Beginner in Game Development? Read here.Super Mario Bros clone tutorial written in XNA 4.0 [MonoGame, ANX, and MonoXNA] by Scott Haley
If you have found any of the posts helpful, please show your appreciation by clicking the up arrow on those posts

Spoiler

How on earth can you go around telling lies, be shown that they are lies, then continue to ignore the evidence to the contrary. I'm not qualified to deal with this, sorry. - HodgmanNever crash to desktop. That's the equivalent of a Starbucks rep punching you in the face when you try to order a coffee with soymilk when they run out of soymilk. - KoobazaurFor programmers, R & D means "Research & Duplicate".Just remember... XML is like violence. If it doesn't work, you just aren't using enough of it... - MoeEvery time I go into my account settings I feel like I've never used the internet before. - booleanPerson X: Do you want to live forever?
Person Y: No, but I want to live a long life.
Person X: Only cowards live that long.
Person Y: And yet, we travel to seek the counsel of these "cowards".

I haven't seen this one, but it would be cool to have some articles exploring different program architectures for different games. Specifically, component based architectures. And here's a thread that provided some healthy discussion, in case that spawns any ideas. Given that 6 people followed that thread, I'm going to guess others would be interested in such an article.

SSAO. The current lighting list is short.

Shadows. I didn't see this anywhere.

Functional programming. Just doing some basic functional programming (in any functional language) can really help to "think outside the box" when it comes to programming in an imperative language.

UI Design/User Experience. There are good HUDs, and then there are bad HUDs. There are good menus, and there are bad menus. Programmers often design for programmers instead of players, and as such produce "bad" UIs and user experiences.

@Caleb how can you ask that on a game dev forum? Pretty much all of us here are programmers,and yes there are artists too.But it's kinda hard to ask how to write the script for your game,and to ask how to create music...that's close to impossible.

If you want a game programmer to teach you how to create soundtracks,then I have news for you: no one is gonna use your soundtracks.

And I don't see why we should have sdl/sfml tutorials like: setting up a window.The web is full of such tutorials.If someone really wants to help,creating a small game with those would be more useful.

@Caleb how can you ask that on a game dev forum? Pretty much all of us here are programmers,and yes there are artists too.But it's kinda hard to ask how to write the script for your game,and to ask how to create music...that's close to impossible.

If you want a game programmer to teach you how to create soundtracks,then I have news for you: no one is gonna use your soundtracks.

Sorry if I misunderstood but I thought this was a tutorial for the complete process of game development? I saw this advertised above the Music and Sound forum part of Gamedev.net.

You can't have a game with no audio... and I didn't mean for programmers to write the part on audio, why not get several audio guys (or gals) to help out?

GameDev.net has been trying to cater to other professions involved in game development beyond just us coders - having a few decent articles might encourage that.

I agree that having yet another "How to create a SDL window" would be a waste of effort, and that the focus should be (at least at first) on topics that can't be found anywhere else with any degree of quality. I also think they should be as language-neutral as possible.

@Caleb how can you ask that on a game dev forum? Pretty much all of us here are programmers,and yes there are artists too.But it's kinda hard to ask how to write the script for your game,and to ask how to create music...that's close to impossible.

GameDev has long been made up of mostly programmers, but if you talk to the staff you'll see that that's something they'd like to change. The goal of GameDev is to encompass all of game development, from programming to graphics to art to music etc. One of the big pushes with these articles will be (I imagine) to write articles to attract non-programmers (artists and musicians particularly) to this site to help build a complete game development community.

And I don't see why we should have sdl/sfml tutorials like: setting up a window.The web is full of such tutorials.If someone really wants to help,creating a small game with those would be more useful.